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Pigeon Pie

A savory pie with puff pastry, pigeons, hard‑boiled eggs, butter, and veal broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare puff pastry and lay a border in a pie dish.

Fill the pie

  1. Cover the bottom with a large cutlet, seasoned with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and mace.

  2. Place pigeons breast down in the dish, adding a small lump of butter and seasoning with pepper and salt in each.

  3. Add sliced hard‑boiled eggs and more butter on top.

  4. Pour in some veal broth and cover the entire dish with pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for an hour and a half.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Mace + vealtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Pepper + vealtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky crust that encloses the filling.
Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which cooks through and becomes tender in the filling.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the filling as they sit among the meat.
Veal broth
Adds moisture and savory flavor, keeping the filling juicy during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the meat stay moist and flavorful.

The step that matters

Bake low and slow. A slow oven at 300°F cooks the pigeon meat through gently, keeping it tender while the pastry sets and browns without drying the filling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, egg, veal):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, egg, veal. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More pigeon pie recipes

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